


Shelter from the Storm

by Adazzle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:01:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25560244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adazzle/pseuds/Adazzle
Summary: Andromeda and Ted, 1971-1983
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks
Kudos: 3





	1. The Kingdom Waits So High Above Her

**Author's Note:**

> You are welcome here no matter your identity or orientation
> 
> Titles from Bob Dylan

People assumed a lot of things when Andromeda Black ran away with Ted Tonks. They fell into five groups. Andromeda had been infatuated by rebellion, under a love potion, cumulating a year-long passionate love affair, desperate to get out of a notoriously terrible family, or pregnant.

Ted is careful in correcting them. All of those things were technically true. Except for the love potion. He didn’t need that. At this point in the story his friends normally cheerfully told him off. Ted wasn’t ugly, but he also, erm-wasn’t handsome.

Anyways, that’s besides the point. Their relationship had been rather long and drawn out, so the confusion was understandable. He grouped it into five parts. Coincidentally, he also liked to say these were the five things that needed to happen for a pureblood facist-usually steve would elbow him here and he’d cough and amend, supremecist to change certain ideas. Openness to change, exposure to new ideas, a safe place to ask questions, a realization of the wrongfulness they’d believed in, and, watch it, next round is on you wanker! He normally didn’t get through the whole story. Pub nights were rare for the father of a young child who had just moved back from Australia. Steve and whichever else of his mates had heard it before but jests were always in order these days. 

Obviously, he didn’t talk about it to new folks (Sorry, beside the point again). But, picture a day where he’s trying to get on Frank Longbottom’s last nerve:

Sorry again. 

At this point in whatever hypothetical scenario he’s in; he’s reminiscing to keep himself from thinking about Frank.

He and Andromeda had properly met in seventh year. It was 1971 and he had spent the summer protesting in solidarity with a friend who was from Derry and working three jobs. He could finally afford a good smoke again.

Make no mistake, Ted would end up head of his research department at St Mungos, but he found relaxation in whatever form he could growing up as the fifth of six children in a single parent’s East London walk up. You can’t always get what you want, but you sure could try sometimes, even if that relaxation was a cold one and a smoke in the back alley.

A visiting professor from Argentina had paired he and Andromeda as project partners in Potions on a cold October Tuesday. Professor Jimenez was shuffling through last year’s term papers as she paired off the students, hoping to group off the talent in a way that would produce something of value for her latest quantitative study on Bubotuber Pus as a treatment for centaur rash. She was a-here, Ted paused to think of a polite word-character.

‘Tonks and-right, Black, Wallingham and Crawford-’ “Excuse me Professor, but that won’t work”, Evan Rosier interrupted. “Black can’t work with Tonks.” Professor Jimenez did not like being interrupted. “GIven that you are neither Black nor Tonks, Mr Rosier, I don’t see why your opinion matters. “Tonks is a mudblood, Professor Jimenez,” Andromeda Black, who used often cruel words to argue what her sister Bellatrix preferred a wand for, said sweetly as she batted Evan’s hand away from her supplies. She locked eyes with him and tossed her dark, waist-length hair. “But it’s alright, I can work for two. I’m sure my paper will be quite helpful for your research.”


	2. The Clouds Don't Drop and the Train Don't Stop

In your average 1971 seventh year potions class a few people would have been indignant over the use of a slur like mudlood. In Ted’s class, most of the Muggleborns were absent that day, staging a long-distance protest over the arrival of internment in Northern Ireland. Ted had gone to class purely because Dippet had confiscated his Gurdyroot pipe and he didn’t have the stomach to do a protest that wasn’t even in person (lunatics, all of them, but well intentioned) sober.

So, when Andromeda Black called him a mudblood to his face, he thought longingly of the Gurdyroot and flashed her a V-sign. Professor Jimenez may not have known what a mudbloood was, but she knew what Ted's hand gesture meant.

She put them both in detention together so they could become more “team-minded”.

Ted was angrily scrubbing the floor of the Ravenclaw Quidditch shower while Andromeda and cleaned the old Nimbus training brooms on his left side. He was going to angrily snap at her for the hell of it when he noticed the the dark purple bruise edging down her shoulder. He hesitated just longer enough her her to see. “What?” she snaps, staring him down in a way that resembles a python he saw on a primary school field trip more. “Not a fan of hiding your love bites?” he smirks up at her. “What the hell are you on about mudblood?” she’s pretty, he thinks, as she pulls out a wand. “Nothing. Just happened to see what’s your fair pureblood skin.” she glanced at her right shoulder where her sleeve is riding down and starts to panic. “You don’t know what you're talking about. “What, you think we don’t know how to have a good time too?”  
She tried to sneer. “Stop talking to me”. They finish the rest of the detention in silence.   
Ted feels a little bad for teasing her but not much-she did humiliate him in front of the entire class.  
The next day he notices that she flinches when evan rosier jokingly throws a flobberworm at her. The next weekend he sees her walking back to Hogsmeade with a black eye.

The Blacks were infamous in those days for several reasons, one of which was a penchant for borderline insanity, to put it lightly. So Ted wasn’t surprised, but he feels a little bad. Even bigots don’t deserve to be hit (assumedly) by their own family. 

They finished their potions project over several silent evenings and got top marks. Strangely, Andromeda doesn’t seem to have the heart to insult him and takes his feedback on her potions charts without much pushback. Once they hand it in she tells him to “fuck off, mudblood”. Ted takes the higher road and ignores her even though he’s made up a nice little rhyme in his head about the Blacks and their closeness to house elves.

After that rather irritating series of incidents, the year goes on. Ted finally tries Romanian Gurdyroot over easter break, smokes some excellent muggle-erm-, let’s skip that, gents, goes to his sister's hippie muggle wedding, and gets reasonably high marks in his exams. The background of the year is dark, Muggle and Magical, but he tries to stay upbeat. At the end of the year, he’s fumbling for Tube Fare as he prepares to leave the train when someone taps his shoulder. “Mark, mate-” he turns around to see Andromeda’s hazel eyes and trails off. “What do you want, Black?” “I want to”, she looks behind her and takes a deep breath “I want to apologize for treating you that way, in potions class. You didn’t deserve that.” Ted is stunned. “Erm, right, that’s very, erm, kind.” 

She talks over him. “I say this for my own safety as well as your’s. I won’t talk to you again, and I”m not going to turn this into some kind of this is the part where I realize i want to spend the rest of my life advocating for muggles instead of joining the Wizengamot despite the fact that my sisters would kill me, but I’ve been learning and i can’t do what I”ve been-what they’ve been doing”. She hears a compartment door open in the distance and starts to turn on her heel. In a monetary decision that will affect the rest of his life, he pulls a pen out of his pocket and reaches for her arm. “What the hell-” “it’s a Muggle quill, Black. If you want to talk, I normally go here for lunch on Tuesdays’.

That short, bright summer, he would learn who had caused her bruises and for what, and the research Treatise by an American muggle that made her start to wonder if she could be wrong about breeding and intelligence. In between third shift at a candle factory and quiet lunches at a tiny Muggle cafe in North London he would begin to truly know her. They would have their first fight, where he told her it wasn’t his job to help him change her, something she admits eventually it took time to learn. If he could turn back the clock again he would hold her tighter, but he didn't know how terrible the monsters she came from were. All he knew was that he knew a beautiful girl that made him laugh, who gave beggars more money more often when she was drunk and made twelfth-century legal case law interesting and somehow wanted to be with him. For then, that was enough.


	3. Gone Like The Rainbow That Shined Above

As the summer drew to a close, Ted had exposed Andromeda to a lot of new ideas. Mostly when they were smoking gurdyroot. They’d gone to the British museum, and to the airport, where Andromeda had shrieked at the thought of letting a metal tube do the job of a broom. She’d found a favorite chip shop and started to learn about legal precedents that would protect Muggle-Borns.. THey were both dreading the return to school the following week when they met up in a Notting Hill Woolworths. Ted flipped through men’s shirts as Andromeda, who had by then learned to use a pen elegantly, scrawled in a notebook next to him. “If we both have transfig together the astronomy tower will be deserted, and Lucius dropped Astronomy and so Cissy will never be up there, but that means we’ll have lunch on Tuesday and Thursdays and then Hogsmeade weekends if we can walk out far enough from the village, but then we won’t see each other for weeks on end when the fall star cycle changes”. She throws up her hands.”Ted, I don’t know how to do this.” He reaches for her. “It’ll be worth it, some how.” George Harrison comes over the store radio, and he fake dances toward her. The moment is forgotten.

They spent their last few days together bouncing between a hotel room in London and Ted’s grandparents’ farm outside Bristol, where Andromeda stays in the old farmhand’s cottage and makes out with Ted as much as she can. In future years they will remember it as the best time of their lives other than having Nymphadora.

On their last night together they stargaze in the fields and Andromeda curls against him, feeling his heartbeat against her and hoping everything will be alright. Sometimes she thinks Ted is too optimistic, too free of the darker secrets she knows. “You ok?” he whispers, kissing her forehead. She looks straight up at the Scorpius constellation, praying that the upcoming year will be normal.

She can’t tell him. She won’t.

“Of course”. She moves closer to him. The moment feels short. Everything will be alright, she tells herself.


	4. Strap Yourself To The Tree With Roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Abusive Siblings, Panic Attacks, Flashbacks

Even back at school, Andromeda continues her rebellious streak. Muggle books, rereading newspaper articles to keep up with the Vietnam War (her lifelong streak of judging Americans has already begun), sneaking Ted into the Room of Requirement. Now that the world has opened up to her she can’t stop. 

Consequently, The fall passes quickly in a flurry of secret kisses and frantic studying. Andromeda is applying for a Ministry program that will allow her to qualify as a solicitor in a year. She hasn’t thought much about Ted and post-graduation plans if she’s honest. Magical Law is mildly progressive, as is the St Mungo’s institute, where Ted wants to study, but you can never predict a coworker or friends’ reaction. Yet at 17, Andromeda hasn’t thought much about the future at all. So she and Ted don’t talk much about the future and the live wholly in the moment until the day Bellatrix is digging around in her school bag for an extra bottle of the Draught of Living Death and finds a crumpled half page of the London Times. “What the buggering hell??” Andromeda hears her shout across the room. She doesn’t see what her sister is holding for a second, and then her heart stops. Her ears are ringing as Bellatrix grabs her wrist and pulls her out of the dungeon, slamming her against the wall. “You blood-traitor bitch-” “Bella, you don’t understand, it’s for a project” her sister spits at her. Andromeda is panicking. Her head is spinning and the memories are coming back. She can almost feel the ground open up under feet. “I don’t even know what it’s for”. A Hufflepuff prefect comes around the corner and stares at them. Bella pulls Andromeda to her feet and only the knowledge that the article is not the one she jokingly edited in purple ink with Ted keeps her heart rate down. “She slipped” Bella says to the Hufflepuff. The few moments of composure gives Andromea enough time to compose a lie that she is doing a current History of Magic project that involves vietnam. She can’t see her sister without flinching for a few days. There is a reason they have not been friends for two years.

She is more careful from then on. She and Ted see each other maybe every other week until Christmas break, when they compare the grades over the Muggle telephone, Ted’s warm laugh filling the cold metal earpiece. She has walked three streets over to the tiny red booth and slipped in one of the few twenty five pence coins Ted gave her the last time they saw each other, winding the cord around her hands anxiously as she breathes in and out and silently renews her obscurus charm. She can picture Ted in his mother’s small flat, his large shoulders hunched over the telephone as he whispers to her, and she almost feels alright. “Meda?” he asks when they are done bragging about each other. “What are we going to do after graduation?” This is the question both of them have been scared to ask each other. They are in love, sure, they are friends, but when they can no longer hide amongst the crowds at Hogwarts what will they be? She wishes she could kiss him. “I don’t know”. “Baby” he sounds like he’s going to cry. “Baby, I can’t live without you”. “I don’t want to live without you either, teddy, but I want you to live.” 

The minute between his reply is the longest she’s experienced. “Let’s just keep going until we have to stop.” she can’t read his tone, but she holds on to the phone cord even tighter.

They didn't bring the topic up when they returned to school, even as they held each other tightly in a train compartment. They don’t bring up the topic as they score a collective 17 OWLs on their exams or as Ravenclaw wins the Cup. 

When they look back the year seemed dark and muted, not at all the way you would expect to get to know your future spouse. They are holding hands, in the dark, trying not to cry.


	5. The Well Breaks Down

It all happens too fast.

The first time they talk about it is the day before the Presentation of Graduates.It’s the week after her eighteenth birthday, and Andromeda has spent the evening drinking on the astronomy tower with her fellow Slytherins, Andronicus Greengrass dancing too close to her as she pours shots over stacks of their OWL results. Timor Shafiq is jokingly teetering on the edge of the tower, Cleansweep in hand, as she downs another shot and swallows back a bout of nausea. “I have to go to bed”, she tells Madena Travers. “You’ve already beaten 11 shot Andromeda”, Madena cheers as she embraces her. “I know, I can’t get too much over the top”. “How could that ever happen?” The Parkinson twins scoff at her jokingly. Timor shrieks and falls spread eagle, the crowds’ attention is torn from her as she slips away.

In later weeks Andromeda will learn that a first year Hufflepuff saw she and Ted slip down an alleyway with their arms wrapped around each other on the last Hogsmead weekend, that Hufflepuff told a Ravenclaw sibling who told Timor Shafiq’s cousin when Timor and his cousin were “jokingly” bullying him after a Quidditch match fail. Timor told Narcissa who told Bellatrix. 

Andromeda will not speak to Timor for the next forty years.

Bellatrix, who has never been subtle, does not confront her right away. She waits until they are crowded into lines before walking across the stage to grab Andromeda’s wrist and whisper “what are you going to do when mummy and daddy aren't so far away anymore?”. Her nails scrape against Andromeda’s skin and she jerks her hand away. “What the fuck are you talking about?”. Her sister smirks. “Your little frolic in the mud of course.” “you’ve finally gone insane, Bella.” “do you love him, Andromeda? Do you love Teddy?” The world stops. Maureen Bellingham’s eight-inch stilettos crash up against her as they start to walk. Bella’s ahead of her, head arched and smiling, as she tries to look behind her to catch Ted’s eye. She disillusions herself as soon as she takes her diploma but she can hear Bella cast an imperius behind her. Moving to the side, she manages to get behind the stage and catch Ted. “we have to leave”. “What are you talking about?” he’s a few feet behind the stage and she just barely has enough time, just barely”. “You have to disapparate when you step off the stage.” “Meet me at Heathrow. You have to listen to me.” he nods, eyes flicking to Mcgonagall lifting honor medals. His hand clings to hers for a split second, and then he is moving forward-------------------------------------


	6. Bound To Cross The Line

One month after the graduation ceremony they are in a dinghy south London apartment splitting a cheap falafel when she tells him. “We have to get out of here”. Ted looks up from his beer, flipping his sandy hair out of his eyes. “Babe. I think we’re going to be ok here.” She takes a deep breath and continues. “We can’t stay in England”. “You want to go to Dublin?” “No, Teddy, we have to go further than that.” she has already revealed so much to Ted, gone so deep into the parts of herself that she has kept folded and pressed and stored away ashamedly, that it does not hurt as much to say as she thought it would. “Bellatrix hurts me.” he reaches for her hands as she continues “I don’t know-i don’t know why she got worse as she got older, and when we were little she just seemed cruel and impulsive, but she drunk in everything all our family told her and then in the third year when it was the worst-”. She chokes back a sob. She will still block out what she tells him, for the safety of her own mind, but she drinks in what she knows: that he holds her like they are one and tells her that he is sorry and they are strong and he understands what they have to do.

They have already made their apartment unplottable, they are living off Andromeda’s inheritance and the little money Ted makes under the table tending bar. Andromeda had reported her birth certificates stolen and picked up a new copy on a harried day a few weeks ago, other than that they are off the grid for magical purposes. The gold in Andromeda’s purse (they don’t trust Gringotts) pays for their plane tickets easily. Ted’s second cousin in Melbourne is a wizard, he easily agrees to help them apply for visa extensions once they are there.

She can breathe easier the moment they hit cruising altitude.


	7. Beauty Walks A Razor's Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Zealand, part one
> 
> titles from Bob Dylan

They ended up in Christchurch purely by mistake. They’d spent two years in Ted’s cousins’ basement, where sleepless nights with a shapeshifting baby made the time go far too slowly in Andromeda’s opinion.

She hated being on benefits the most. Their work visas had lagged and it was harder to get under the table work without knowing anyone. She wondered sometimes if Narcissa’s ream of political favors (in this case, slowing their visas), extended this far across the world.

After three months without a job Ted had begun to look outside Sydney. They had to be creative, he told her. He found the Magical Creatures posting accidentally. They’d both done alright in Care of, and they could commute via apparition to Akaroa, where there were not one but three living metamorphagai. Apparently taking care of easily angered Poai birds is easier when you can morph your appearance at will.

In Christchurch they buy a tiny white house with purple shutters. They garden on the weekends and fish on the beach. Andromeda knitted her daughter tiny colorful hats for when they were around Muggles.

The next few years fly by. Andromeda rides a dragon for the first time. Ted and Nymphadora learn how to scuba dive. Andromeda misses her family, but she stops getting British newspapers and avoids the expat bars. No one knows where they live and they’ve technically made their house Unplottable. Ted’s been accepted to a fellowship in Akaroa. Andromeda, in what might be the most shocking event of her life, has been accepted to a Mugge school of law. Soon they'll qualify for residency. 

Frank found out where they lived because Ted sent a letter to his brother.

"It was one fucking letter, Dro" he hisses at her. It's late at night and Frank Longbottom has been standing outside for half an hour. "If he can find us so can my sisters. And how did Frank convince him to give up our address? Did he imperio him?". If he wants to play dirty they can play filthy. "Andromeda". She sighs. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. But so was sending a letter." She thought they were on the same page about contacting family but apparently not. "What? You want me to just leave my brother forever? I wanted him to know I had a daughter, Andromeda."

She thinks she might cry. She sits down on the sofa, knees weak, and buries her face in her hands. "What if my sister-finds him?" Ted sits down next to her. "He's not going to write me back, Andy. We'll talk on the telephone sometimes, that's all. You can't do magic around the telephone, baby." She takes in a deep, shuddering breath. She is so, so afraid.

Behind them, Frank knocks politely. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I was going to after I got the letter back, I swear." Frank knocks again. "Frank, shut it, we love you but this is a lot", Ted calls. He gets up to let Frank in.

He tells them dark, strange stories that night. Andromeda tells them what she knows of her sisters' special curses, but they tell Frank they won't help further. "There's a target painted on our backs", Ted says. "We'd be more hurt than help, maybe". Frank has an odd look on his face. "Things are escalating, there. Everyone has a target on their back if they're not a Death Eater".

Andromeda can't sleep that night. "Are we making the right choice?" Ted whispers. Andromeda's hands feel clammy. "I don't know."


	8. Highway of Diamonds, Mouth of a Graveyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Zealand, Part Two
> 
> (as usual, chapters and work title are from Bob Dylan)
> 
> TW: off-screen death

In January of 1981, they celebrate five years in the little white house in Christchurch.

Andromeda is lonely, and she misses England. The years feel long and short. She is kept busy homeschooling Nymphadora, but there is only one wizarding co-op in Christchurch, and she doesn't really fit in there. Nymphadora-er-turns heads easily-literally and figuratively. And despite the fact that she learned to garden and make her own granola, she knows she can often come off as snobby to the mums at co-op. Never mind how she reacts to Ted's coworkers inviting her to help them magically mulch flowerbeds with fresh dragon fertilizer.

One cold night in early March she's in bed, Ted's arm thrown over her shoulder, half asleep and dreaming about being able to visit Covenant Garden again when an owl slams into their window. It was cursed, and it had broken their wards. Andromeda called the Aurors, Nymphaora peering curiously over her shoulder, while Ted healed the bird. Then she heard him choke out a sob. She runs back upstairs. "It's my brothers", Ted manages to say, and as Andromeda folds herself over him and gestures for her daughter to "go to bed NOW", she sees the end of Frank Longbottom's letter. Both of Ted's brothers and his sister-in-law are dead, and Frank found a note at the scene.

I won't forget you, Andy. B.

Andromeda can't breathe. Frank had risked so much to even send this.

The Aurors help them move and they get a Secret Keeper.

Andromeda reads as many books about New Zealand as she can. She is going to stay here, and she is going to be happy. She has her husband and her daughter. She'll adopt a Kneazle. She'll take up her elderly Muggle neighbors' invitation to make lolly cake. She can go back to work after Nymphadora starts secondary school.

They take their first vacation as a family in May.

Ted convinces her to go to Australia for a conference in July. She's nervous the whole time. She hasn't been out of New Zealand since they moved, and it's a good strategic location. Fourteen portkeys or five international apparation instances from London, and that's only to Auckland. But Australia is close, and they go and they have a good time. Nymphadora is obsessed with parrots for months afterward.

In September they get a letter from Sirius. He wants to visit Orion in the Philippines after this is all over, and maybe they could come to meet him. 

She hasn't responded to the letter-she didn't think it was fair to not go no contact on her side when Ted did on his and look what happened-on Halloween. Two days after, as she's hiding the last of the candy Ted's American coworkers gave Nymphadora (she'd changed her face five times and they'd enjoyed this spin on Trick or Treating), she gets the newspaper. The article is in the Foreign News section, and at the very bottom, it mentions Sirius' arrest.


	9. Everything is as hollow as it seems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A letter goes unreturned
> 
> Chapter title from Bob Dylan

Dear Andromeda,

I am so happy to have an address I can finally write you at. I understand why you didn't-we have lived through dangerous times. Yet I want you to know, dearest sister, that I miss you immensely. I would love for Draco to meet his cousin. Lucius' recovery has been slow and my time is very dedicated to my family. We, and British society are rebuilding as a whole. Thus, I may not have time to travel. But if you come here, please reach out to me. I know you have plenty of adventures in wild Oceania to speak of, and I cannot wait to hear them. We have lived through much.

& we cannot forget the past.

I have never forgotten you,

N


End file.
